'Go along with you!' exclaimed Susan, giving him a push 'Innocents like you, too! Who'll begin next? Go along, Sir!'
Susan was not in any serious strait, for she could hardly speak for laughing; but Diogenes, on the staircase, hearing a rustling against the wall, and a shuffling of feet, and seeing through the banisters that there was some contention going on, and foreign invasion in the house, formed a different opinion, dashed down to the rescue, and in the twinkling of an eye had Mr Toots by the leg.
Susan screamed, laughed, opened the street-door, and ran downstairs; the bold Toots tumbled staggering out into the street, with Diogenes holding on to one leg of his pantaioons, as if Burgess and Co. were his cooks, and had provided that dainty morsel for his holiday entertainment; Diogenes shaken off, rolled over and over in the dust, got up' again, whirled round the giddy Toots and snapped at him: and all this turmoil Mr Carker, reigning up his horse and sitting a little at a distance, saw to his amazement, issue from the stately house of Mr Dombey.
Mr Carker remained watching the discomfited Toots, when Diogenes was called in, and the door shut: and while that gentleman, taking refuge in a doorway near at hand, bound up the torn leg of his pantaloons with a costly silk handkerchief that had formed part of his expensive outfit for the advent
'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Mr Carker, riding up, with his most propitiatory smile. 'I hope you are not hurt?'
'Oh no, thank you,' replied Mr Toots, raising his flushed face, 'it's of no consequence' Mr Toots would have signified, if he could, that he liked it very much.
'If the dog's teeth have entered the leg, Sir - ' began Carker, with a display of his own'